King Case Is Handed to Jury; Deliberations to Resume Today : Trial: Final defense argument is rich in biblical references, while prosecutor calls officers ‘bullies with badges.’ LAPD is now in a heightened state of readiness.

Almost one year after a state jury returned not guilty verdicts in the case of four police officers accused of beating Rodney G. King, another judge sent the case to another group of jurors Saturday, this time to decide whether the same defendants violated King’s civil rights.

“You are now in the hands of the marshals,” U.S. District Judge John G. Davies told the jury at 3:07 p.m. “You may retire to the jury room.”

Deliberations will resume today at 12:30 p.m., a late start so that some jurors can attend Easter services.

The costliest riots in modern American history swept Los Angeles at the conclusion of last year’s state trial, and the federal case ended Saturday in a city tense with anticipation about the verdicts. The Los Angeles Police Department went to a heightened state of readiness at midnight Saturday, adding 600 officers to patrol duties.

The prospect of new rioting has haunted the federal trial from its opening moments. Davies told jurors that they should set aside any information they had learned about the case outside the courtroom and that they should not be “influenced by any external consequences of your verdicts.”

After more than six weeks and 61 witnesses, the trial culminated with a pair of closing arguments delivered by a criminal defense attorney and a Justice Department prosecutor who have contrasting styles and who have come to dislike one another during the course of this case.

Harland W. Braun, the lawyer for Officer Theodore J. Briseno, kicked off the trial’s final day with an eloquent two-hour presentation, rich in historical and biblical references and bitter in its attack on the government lawyers for indicting his client and for accusing him of lying.

“You call an American citizen--a police officer--a perjurer?” Braun asked the prosecutors. “Prove it.”

Barry F. Kowalski, a veteran civil rights lawyer and one of two lead prosecutors in the trial, then concluded the government’s case with a long but scrappy rebuttal that called on jurors to use their common sense.

“Let’s call it like it is, ladies and gentlemen,” Kowalski said of the four defendants. “They were bullies with badges.”

The case is in the hands of an eight-man, four-woman panel of jurors, composed of nine Anglos, two African-Americans and one Latino. All 12 panelists, as well as three alternates, were selected after a grueling process intended to find citizens who could consider the case impartially. Although they fidgeted in their chairs at times, they stayed attentive for the most part throughout the five weeks of testimony and three days of closing arguments.

Even though they have seen the videotape of the beating dozens of times, they sat forward Saturday and watched again with interest as Kowalski showed it to them one last time.

“Watch the videotape. Use your common sense,” Kowalski said. “It’s wrong to beat a man who’s lying on the ground. You know that in the schoolyard when you’re a kid. You don’t kick a man when he’s down. . . . The law demands that we follow that schoolyard rule.”

After the lawyers completed their closing remarks, Davies read 39 instructions to guide jurors in how they should weigh the evidence and in what is required to convict or acquit the officers. After his instructions, he turned the case over to the jurors who deliberated until about 5:45 p.m.

Davies also instructed lawyers for both sides to be within 15 minutes of his courtroom while deliberations are under way so the attorneys can be present if Davies is required to answer questions from the jury. Exact details for disclosing verdicts were unclear, but representatives of the U.S. Marshals Service said they expect that there will be at least one hour’s notice when the jury concludes its work.

In addition to Briseno, Officers Laurence M. Powell and Timothy E. Wind are accused of kicking, stomping or beating King with batons, in the process depriving him of his constitutional right to be safe from the intentional use of unreasonable force. The fourth defendant, Sgt. Stacey C. Koon, was the senior officer at the scene of the beating, and he is accused of allowing officers under his supervision to administer an unreasonable beating.

Braun was the final defense lawyer to make his closing argument, and he chose a different approach than his co-counsel.

While the other defense lawyers used copious exhibits and electronic devices, Braun forswore the equipment in favor of what he called an old-fashioned approach.

As he sketched out the evidence in the case, Braun returned again and again to a biblical refrain: “What evil has this man done?” he asked, gesturing time and again at Briseno.

Braun set his tone with his opening sentences, reminding jurors that the trial was concluding on the day between Good Friday and Easter, and he used religious imagery throughout his presentation. Without ever mentioning Jesus by name, Braun structured his remarks around the judgment of Jesus by Pontius Pilate.

In considering the fate of Jesus, Pilate capitulated to popular whim, Braun said. The challenge for this jury, he added, is to resist the public pressure to convict the officers.

“No man should be condemned in this case because of the fear of a riot,” Braun said. “My client is on trial. But you are also on trial. Your courage is on trial.”

Besides defending his own client in his closing argument, Braun attempted to undermine the entire prosecution, which he said can be measured by its treatment of Briseno, who is seen on the videotape of the beating delivering one blow to King, a stomp to the back of his upper body.

Braun said Briseno was indicted for tactical reasons--Briseno broke ranks with the other defendants during last year’s state trial, causing chaos within the defense--and he called that a cynical and indefensible move by the prosecution.

“Don’t be fooled,” Braun told jurors. “Don’t use him to convict someone else.”

Braun’s tactic and his vigorous argument on behalf of the other defendants reflected the defense’s determination to present a unified front in the federal trial. Although the truce between the officers was sometimes strained, the trial concluded without any of the defendants attacking one another.

Outside court, Braun said the truce was held together largely by the defendants’ common opposition to the federal prosecution. In the courtroom, he devoted the bulk of his closing argument to criticizing the government lawyers.

“The indictment of Ted Briseno is so immoral, so terrible, that it should undermine your confidence in the government,” said Braun, who called the prosecutors “despicable.”

At one point, Braun even drew Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven D. Clymer, one of two lead prosecutors, into his biblical analogy: “I’m sort of glad that Clymer wasn’t around in those days because he would have indicted the apostles,” Braun said.

Clymer sat stone-faced while other courtroom observers laughed at that remark. During a recess after Braun finished, however, Clymer congratulated him on his argument.

Michael P. Stone, the lawyer for Powell, praised Braun’s presentation and said he believed it bolstered the chances of all four officers being acquitted.

“This is the way this case should be argued,” Stone said. “There’s no reason for these officers to turn on each other and no reason for their lawyers to turn on each other.”

Kowalski never directly responded to Braun’s accusations, but the prosecutor accused lawyers for the officers of trying to divert attention from the facts of the case by striking out at the government.

“On the facts that have been presented to you in this case, it is easier to attack the government than it is to defend the defendants,” Kowalski said.

Sometimes impassioned and other times folksy, Kowalski accused the defendants and their lawyers of distorting the trial testimony and the facts of the case. He was particularly pointed in his criticism of Koon, the only one of the four officers who testified in the federal trial.

“You can expect defendant Koon to say whatever’s in defendant Koon’s interests,” Kowalski said. “The truth doesn’t change.”

Koon remained expressionless, his head cocked to one side, as Kowalski accused him of lying. At the end of the session, Koon gathered up his materials and left the court without commenting.

Kowalski’s argument, like one that Clymer delivered last week, struck two main themes that are essential to the prosecution case: that the officers used unreasonable force against King and that they knew it was unreasonable when they did it.

The second issue goes to the officers’ intent, and prosecutors have presented an array of circumstantial evidence that they say proves the officers knew they were wrong to beat King in the way they did. In particular, they have presented police reports that they say deliberately understated the nature and seriousness of the beating.

Kowalski noted that none of the reports filed by Wind, Powell or Koon specifically stated that the officers struck King while he was on the ground. Witnesses who testified for the defendants attributed that to faulty memory, which they say is a common affliction for people after a violent confrontation.

But Kowalski ridiculed the suggestion that the officers could have forgotten that King was on the ground when he was hit.

“There was one thing that everybody from Paris to Tokyo saw,” Kowalski said of the beating, captured on videotape by amateur cameraman George Holliday. “There was one thing that causes horror and outrage throughout the world. . . . The thing that everybody saw, that everybody was so outraged about, was that the defendants were beating a man who was on the ground.”

The failure to include that information in the reports was not because officers forgot it, Kowalski said. Instead, Kowalski suggested that they had omitted that and other information--including alleged baton blows to King’s head--because they did not know that a videotape had captured their actions and therefore thought that they could get away with having beaten King.

“The world learned what happened at Foothill and Osborne for one reason,” Kowalski said. “That’s because George Holliday had a videotape.”

Kowalski also came to the defense of the prosecution’s main expert on the use of force, Sgt. Mark John Conta, who has come under withering attack from the officers and their lawyers.

“He’s an honest man,” Kowalski said. “He doesn’t deserve the name-calling he got.”

Kowalski compared Conta to the defense’s use-of-force expert, Sgt. Charles L. Duke Jr. Although Kowalski said Duke was a brave and accomplished officer, the prosecutor accused Duke of lying on the stand.

Duke testified that officers were taught to break bones and beat suspects into submission “if that’s what it takes.” Duke said Deputy Chief Matthew V. Hunt, then a police commander, ordered that training. But Hunt later took the stand to deny that he had ever made such a comment.

“Sgt. Duke, as accomplished and as brave as he is, lied to you,” Kowalski said.

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